Central Panel: Christ
"What is truth? said jesting
Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." These famous words of the
philosopher Frances Bacon provide a powerful frame for the passage we have read
this morning. Pilate denied the possibility of truth as he stood in the
presence of the on who is the way, the truth, and the life. He asked the
greatest question in the face of the greatest answer and never knew the depth
invoked by his shallow cynicism. In the same way, he rightly identifies Jesus
as the embodied representative of humanity and masculinity. He preaches a
powerful gospel and himself goes away unsaved.
"Behold, the man." The text before us today contains the casual
and contemptuous words of a small and scared bureaucrat. The Roman politician
Pontius Pilate intends this as nothing more than an indication of the one named
in the indictment. But the author the Fourth Gospel writes at more than one
level. Here we see in one short phrase not only the accuracy of a careful
historian, but the insight of a master theologian and the subtlety of a skilled
story-teller. With artful irony John hints that Pilate says more than he means
and reveals more than he knows. Here. . .
A derisive declaration becomes an
incisive proclamation.
A
statement of mere designation becomes a divine revelation.
The
bare verbiage of condemnation becomes the exalted vision of salvation.
In this one
phrase, Pilate says more than he knows and declares more than he believes:
"Behold, the man."
We know that this incident occurs on
Good Friday, the sixth day of the week. You may recall that John begins his
Gospel with the phrase, "In the beginning was the Word," deliberately
invoking the first syllables of sacred Scripture in Genesis 1.1, "In the
beginning God created the Heavens and the earth." You will also remember
that in that mighty creation account, God creates humanity on the sixth day.
And God says something of that pinnacle of creation that has gone unsaid up to
that point. Of all the rest of the created world God "saw that it was
good." Of the full creation completed in the man Adam God declares,
"It was very good."
And now before Pilate on the sixth
day stands the New Adam, not just absolute God but sinless humanity. "Behold, the man."
As we ponder these words in this
hour, I would point out two features of this phrase.
First of all, there is the definite
article: Pilate does not say, "Behold A man," but, "Behold, THE
man." In the Latin language which Pilate doubtless spoke, there is no
definite article. "Ecce homo," he said, "Behold, a man."
But John, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, renders it in the
more subtle and flexible Greek of the New Testament, "Behold THE man."
Secondly, there is the noun itself.
Meditating on Pilate's Latin, John feels the Spirit's guidance to use one of
two words available to him. One word is gender-specific, and would mean,
"Behold, the male." Instead, John selects the word ἂνθρωπος, the root of our word "anthropology," a more inclusive
term which describes humanity in general. We could translate it, "Behold,
the person, the individual, the human being." And this is as it should be,
for in this moment Our Lord stands as the federal head of the human race, the
embodied representative of all of us and each of us who descend from the common
seed of Adam. John does not record the phrase as, "Behold the male,"
or "Behold the female," nor does he write, "Behold the white
man," or, "Behold the black man." The word is inclusive: "Behold, the man."
I believe, however, that we can
legitimately focus on a narrower application. For while Jesus was and is the
perfect revelation of God's intention for humanity, he was also, in the
scandalous particularity of the Incarnation, not just a human being but a male.
He was born as a boy and grew to be a man. The fact he embodies more that
masculinity does not mean that he embodies less. He is in this moment
everything our Almighty Maker meant for a man to be: "Behold, the man."
This is Men's Day at Saint Matthew
and our emphasis is on the Lord's call to godly men and godly manhood. So it is
appropriate today to remind ourselves that Jesus is not only the ultimate
revelation of the Godhead, but also the ultimate revelation of manhood. If you
want to know what it means to be a man, do not look at an action hero or a
celebrity singer; do not look at a star athlete or a Third World strongman; do
not look to a beer commercial or a billionaire businessman. Look instead at
Jesus of Nazareth: "Behold, the man."
And I would further note the context
in which we find this declaration. While all of Jesus' life and each of Jesus'
actions body forth the fullness of God's plan in the creation of man, it is
only here in all the four Gospels that we find this particular formula. So if
we want to know what it means to be a man, we need to know the circumstances
under which Jesus earned that title: "Behold,
the man."
The broader context is easy to
discover: the arrest, trial, and condemnation of Jesus. In a more precise
sense, the context is that portion of Jesus' trial conducted not by the
religious authorities of Israel but by the political power of Rome. In a still
more detailed understanding, this phrase comes at the midway point in Pilate's
examination of the prophet from Nazareth. In 18.31-19.7, Pilate first examines
Jesus. In 19.8-16, Pilate conducts his second interview with Christ. Both
encounters end with the religious rulers' call for crucifixion. Here, then, is
the manhood of Jesus squarely in the middle of man's inhumanity. "Behold, the man."
So then, the ultimate revelation of
the true meaning of manhood comes when we see Jesus at the very intersection of
innocence and injustice. In this moment, Jesus has earned nothing but praise
and received nothing but punishment; he has acted uprightly and been treated
unjustly; he has done everything right and the world has done him wrong: "Behold, the man."
It is, then, at the height of
adversity - or perhaps we do better to say, at the DEPTH of adversity - that
manhood manifests itself. As G. K. Chesterton reminds us,
That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we
knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all
insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt
that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be
wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds,
Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only
courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a
breaking point -- and does not break.
In this text,
we see Jesus beaten, but unbroken. And in this moment, the incomplete
omnipotence of the Almighty finds fulfillment in the complete meaning of
manhood: Behold what it means to be a man. "Behold, the man."
Behold
the man, unbroken by an unjust system. They came for Jesus in the dead of
the night. They tried him in a secret courtroom. The judges called for his
execution and declared him guilty before the trial ever began. The cops beat
him up for fun after they had cuffed his hands behind him. The soldier's robe
and crown of thorns that mocked his messianic kingship were more than personal
insults; they were a mockery of the very idea of justice meted out by honorable
authority. Then the Grand Jury no-billed Barabbas the murderer and demanded the
cross for Jesus. And Pilate, who knew clearly that this man had done no wrong,
washed his hands of his responsibility and blamed it all on the system. And yet
in this moment Jesus reveals that a man is not defined by the externals of
injustice but by the internal image of God he bears. "Behold, the man."
Behold
the man, silent before a frightening threat. In verse ten, under direct
cross-examination and interrogation, Jesus remains silent. Mark that! Sometimes
the strength of a man lies in the ability to hold his peace. But this is not
the silence of fear nor the absence of speech as acquiescence in the face of
injustice. This is the silence that forces Pilate to hear the echoes of his own
lying words. Jesus who, the first verse of the first chapter of this very
Gospel tells us, is the Word. . .here does not speak a word. Sometimes the mark
of a man is the ability to restrain his own mouth. "Behold, the man."
Behold
the man, speaking up to those who hold him down. When Pilate boasts of his
authority, Jesus quietly responds that ultimate authority lies with God alone. The
word "authority" here is interesting. It means, not absolute power,
but delegated jurisdiction invested from a higher plane. Pilate warns Jesus
that the entire might of the Roman system lies behind his every word. As a Jew,
Jesus is the ethnic minority, and Pilate represents the ethnic majority. As a peasant, Jesus is the poor, and Pilate
represents the extorted wealth of empire. As a non-citizen in his own land,
Jesus is the disenfranchised and Pilate is the one for whom the system was
designed to work.
Yet Jesus speaks one sentence with
such power that Pilate flees frightened from the room.
Pilate, he recognizes, is no more
than a boxing glove on the fist of God, a puppet on the hand of the
Puppet-Master, a pair of pliers in the grip of the Master Mechanic. And Jesus
quietly warns that if Pilate attempts to exercise authority in rebellion
against the One who gives it, he signs his own death warrant.
Mark this now: A man knows when to
be silent, but a man knows when to speak. And he speaks truth at the price of
punishment, and right at the risk of retribution. He refuses simply to
disappear, to go away and let the evil gears of an uncivil society reduce him
to dust and sweep him away. He may speak only one word of truth before the cogs
of their system grind him to powder, but in that powder there will be one gritty
grain of truth that in the end will wreck their entire machine. "Behold, the man."
Behold
the man, bearing every burden but hatred. Jesus bore it all that day, but
there was one burden he refused to bear.
He bore the beating both of whips
and of words, but there was one burden he
refused to bear.
He bore the crown of
thorns upon his head and the mocking sign above
his head, but there was
one burden he refused to bear.
He bore the
theft of his garments, the only thing he owned,
gambled away
at his very nail-pierced feet, but there was one
burden he
refused to bear.
He
bore the cross of his own unjust execution through the
crowded
streets of Jerusalem, but there was one burden he
refused
to bear.
Jesus bore it
all that day - but there was one burden he refused to bear. Jesus refused to
bear the burden of hatred.
In chapter eighteen, verse
thirty-six, Jesus tells Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world."
And then, to define and demarcate forever the boundary between the Kingdom of
Heaven and the kingdoms of this world, the Lord explains, "If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be
fighting." Look carefully at that word "servants." This is the
only time Jesus uses it of his disciples. It is a legal and military term that
refers to a court officer in charge of carrying out sentences, or to the
soldiers who wage war at the will of their king. Jesus does not just say that
he has not called his servants to armed revolt: Jesus says that he has no such
soldiers because that form of battle is not an instrument of the Kingdom of
Heaven. Indeed, he has already rebuked Peter for swinging a sword at one of his
enemies in the Garden of Gethsemane!
Jesus discovers, in this moment of
crisis, that with everything a man has to bear, he has no strength for the
deadweight of hatred.
The burden of hate is too great, and
will break the back that bears its weight. In his speech, "Where Do We Go
From Here?", delivered to the 11th convention of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Dr. King acknowledged that despite great
gains, racial injustice remained entrenched in America. "The Negro,"
he declared, "still lives in the basement of the Great Society." And
yet in the face of the unvarnished facts of injustice he declared,
And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I
know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. . . .And
I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I'm talking about
a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. . . .and I say to
myself that hate is too great a burden to bear.
A man fights as long as there is
fighting to be done and there will be fighting to be done until that great and
final day when the kingdoms of this world are truly become the kingdoms of Our
Lord and of his Christ. But a man knows no solider can fight if encumbered with
weapons that will not do the work. And so a man takes up every burden God calls
him to bear, by disencumbering himself of hatred. "Behold, the man."
Right Panel: The Church
Now I must say to you this morning,
I must emphasize, that in one sense I am a poor messenger to bring this
message: because I see what you see, but I do not live what you live. The same
Constitution of the United States that declared me a creation of God with
inalienable rights declared you sixty percent of a human being. I know that
though I see what you see, I do not live what you live.
And for that reason I ask you this
morning to look, not to me, but to Jesus, because he not only sees what you
see: He lives what you live. And in the midst of your experience he has forged the
strategy for victory. We must look to Our Lord. We must "Behold, the man."
And we need to look to Jesus to
learn what it is to be a man. Because the black man in America has seen in
recent days too many thorny crowns and too many crosses. We have not seen a
soldier's scarlet tunic in mockery of ruler's purple robe, but we have seen a blood-stained
brown hoodie in Sanford, Florida. We have not seen nail-pierced hands stretched
forth on a cross, but we have seen pair of raised hands in Ferguson, Missouri.
We have not seen a man writhing for his next breath on a Roman cross in
Palestine, but we have heard a man shouting, "I can't breathe" on the
streets of Staten Island.
And how does Our Lord call a man to
respond? With the illogic of love and the insanity of non-violent rebellion.
Dr. Howard Thurman, Dean of Chapel
at Howard University and Boston
University for more
than two decades explains the terrible price we will have to pay to wage the
warfare of love. The greatest tool of nonviolence, he writes, "is the will
to refrain from the automatic response to violence: to fight or to flee."
Love, he declares, is not cutting off those who harm us, nor is it cutting
ourselves off from those who harm us. It is an insistence upon remaining in
relationship and holding up the harm to the clear light of examination. And
when we dare take the field of this battle, says Dr. Thurman, "there is
rioting in the streets of the soul, and the price of tranquility comes terribly
high." We have had rioting in the streets of Ferguson and rioting in the
streets of Watts and it is not for me to pronounce on the wisdom or rightness
of those acts. But I say with Dr. Thurman and I say with the example of Christ
that until there is rioting in the streets of our own souls as we choose to
remain in a relationship of love to a world full of hate, the citadel soul of this racist society will remain
uninvaded and we will not move forward.
In the name of Christ, in the name
of The Man, I charge you, be a man!
Be
a man, unbroken by an unjust system.
Be
a man, silent before a frightening threat.
Be
a man, speaking up to those who hold you down.
Be
a man, bearing every burden but hatred.
And I don't
for a moment blame you if you say, "Preacher, I agree, but I can't do
it." I don't for a moment blame you if you say, "I'm man enough to
fight back, but not man enough to love back." I don't for a moment blame
you if you say, "I'm man enough to die that death, but not man enough to
live that life." I don't for a moment blame you because I say the same
thing to myself. And that is why to be A man, you must know THE man. For Jesus
does not just come to set the example; he comes to empower the practice. Jesus
does not just stand before you; he dwells within you. Jesus does not just show
you what to do; Jesus shows you what he will do in and through you. "Behold, the man."
Left Panel: The World
And so today we pray as we come to a
close; today we pray as we go forth from this place, changed people to face an
unchanged world; today we pray in the immortal words of James Weldon Johnson's
great hymn, composed in 1900 on the birthday of Abraham Lincoln:
God of
our weary years,
God of
our silent tears,
Thou
who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou
who hast by Thy might,
Led us
into the light,
Keep
us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest
our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest
our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed
beneath Thy hand,
May we
forever stand,
True
to our God,
True to our native land.
What it Means to be a Man in the Face
of a Hijacked Jury,
John 19.1-5 -
A Sermon Preached at the Saint Matthew
Missionary Baptist Church,
Sunday, December 14, 2014
Central Panel: Christ
"What is truth? said jesting
Pilate, and would not stay for an answer." These famous words of the
philosopher Frances Bacon provide a powerful frame for the passage we have read
this morning. Pilate denied the possibility of truth as he stood in the
presence of the on who is the way, the truth, and the life. He asked the
greatest question in the face of the greatest answer and never knew the depth
invoked by his shallow cynicism. In the same way, he rightly identifies Jesus
as the embodied representative of humanity and masculinity. He preaches a
powerful gospel and himself goes away unsaved.
"Behold, the man." The text before us today contains the casual
and contemptuous words of a small and scared bureaucrat. The Roman politician
Pontius Pilate intends this as nothing more than an indication of the one named
in the indictment. But the author the Fourth Gospel writes at more than one
level. Here we see in one short phrase not only the accuracy of a careful
historian, but the insight of a master theologian and the subtlety of a skilled
story-teller. With artful irony John hints that Pilate says more than he means
and reveals more than he knows. Here. . .
A derisive declaration becomes an
incisive proclamation.
A
statement of mere designation becomes a divine revelation.
The
bare verbiage of condemnation becomes the exalted vision of salvation.
In this one
phrase, Pilate says more than he knows and declares more than he believes:
"Behold, the man."
We know that this incident occurs on
Good Friday, the sixth day of the week. You may recall that John begins his
Gospel with the phrase, "In the beginning was the Word," deliberately
invoking the first syllables of sacred Scripture in Genesis 1.1, "In the
beginning God created the Heavens and the earth." You will also remember
that in that mighty creation account, God creates humanity on the sixth day.
And God says something of that pinnacle of creation that has gone unsaid up to
that point. Of all the rest of the created world God "saw that it was
good." Of the full creation completed in the man Adam God declares,
"It was very good."
And now before Pilate on the sixth
day stands the New Adam, not just absolute God but sinless humanity. "Behold, the man."
As we ponder these words in this
hour, I would point out two features of this phrase.
First of all, there is the definite
article: Pilate does not say, "Behold A man," but, "Behold, THE
man." In the Latin language which Pilate doubtless spoke, there is no
definite article. "Ecce homo," he said, "Behold, a man."
But John, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, renders it in the
more subtle and flexible Greek of the New Testament, "Behold THE man."
Secondly, there is the noun itself.
Meditating on Pilate's Latin, John feels the Spirit's guidance to use one of
two words available to him. One word is gender-specific, and would mean,
"Behold, the male." Instead, John selects the word ἂνθρωπος, the root of our word "anthropology," a more inclusive
term which describes humanity in general. We could translate it, "Behold,
the person, the individual, the human being." And this is as it should be,
for in this moment Our Lord stands as the federal head of the human race, the
embodied representative of all of us and each of us who descend from the common
seed of Adam. John does not record the phrase as, "Behold the male,"
or "Behold the female," nor does he write, "Behold the white
man," or, "Behold the black man." The word is inclusive: "Behold, the man."
I believe, however, that we can
legitimately focus on a narrower application. For while Jesus was and is the
perfect revelation of God's intention for humanity, he was also, in the
scandalous particularity of the Incarnation, not just a human being but a male.
He was born as a boy and grew to be a man. The fact he embodies more that
masculinity does not mean that he embodies less. He is in this moment
everything our Almighty Maker meant for a man to be: "Behold, the man."
This is Men's Day at Saint Matthew
and our emphasis is on the Lord's call to godly men and godly manhood. So it is
appropriate today to remind ourselves that Jesus is not only the ultimate
revelation of the Godhead, but also the ultimate revelation of manhood. If you
want to know what it means to be a man, do not look at an action hero or a
celebrity singer; do not look at a star athlete or a Third World strongman; do
not look to a beer commercial or a billionaire businessman. Look instead at
Jesus of Nazareth: "Behold, the man."
And I would further note the context
in which we find this declaration. While all of Jesus' life and each of Jesus'
actions body forth the fullness of God's plan in the creation of man, it is
only here in all the four Gospels that we find this particular formula. So if
we want to know what it means to be a man, we need to know the circumstances
under which Jesus earned that title: "Behold,
the man."
The broader context is easy to
discover: the arrest, trial, and condemnation of Jesus. In a more precise
sense, the context is that portion of Jesus' trial conducted not by the
religious authorities of Israel but by the political power of Rome. In a still
more detailed understanding, this phrase comes at the midway point in Pilate's
examination of the prophet from Nazareth. In 18.31-19.7, Pilate first examines
Jesus. In 19.8-16, Pilate conducts his second interview with Christ. Both
encounters end with the religious rulers' call for crucifixion. Here, then, is
the manhood of Jesus squarely in the middle of man's inhumanity. "Behold, the man."
So then, the ultimate revelation of
the true meaning of manhood comes when we see Jesus at the very intersection of
innocence and injustice. In this moment, Jesus has earned nothing but praise
and received nothing but punishment; he has acted uprightly and been treated
unjustly; he has done everything right and the world has done him wrong: "Behold, the man."
It is, then, at the height of
adversity - or perhaps we do better to say, at the DEPTH of adversity - that
manhood manifests itself. As G. K. Chesterton reminds us,
That a good man may have his back to the wall is no more than we
knew already, but that God could have His back to the wall is a boast for all
insurgents forever. Christianity is the only religion on earth that has felt
that omnipotence made God incomplete. Christianity alone felt that God, to be
wholly God, must have been a rebel as well as a king. Alone of all creeds,
Christianity has added courage to the virtues of the Creator. For the only
courage worth calling courage must necessarily mean that the soul passes a
breaking point -- and does not break.
In this text,
we see Jesus beaten, but unbroken. And in this moment, the incomplete
omnipotence of the Almighty finds fulfillment in the complete meaning of
manhood: Behold what it means to be a man. "Behold, the man."
Behold
the man, unbroken by an unjust system. They came for Jesus in the dead of
the night. They tried him in a secret courtroom. The judges called for his
execution and declared him guilty before the trial ever began. The cops beat
him up for fun after they had cuffed his hands behind him. The soldier's robe
and crown of thorns that mocked his messianic kingship were more than personal
insults; they were a mockery of the very idea of justice meted out by honorable
authority. Then the Grand Jury no-billed Barabbas the murderer and demanded the
cross for Jesus. And Pilate, who knew clearly that this man had done no wrong,
washed his hands of his responsibility and blamed it all on the system. And yet
in this moment Jesus reveals that a man is not defined by the externals of
injustice but by the internal image of God he bears. "Behold, the man."
Behold
the man, silent before a frightening threat. In verse ten, under direct
cross-examination and interrogation, Jesus remains silent. Mark that! Sometimes
the strength of a man lies in the ability to hold his peace. But this is not
the silence of fear nor the absence of speech as acquiescence in the face of
injustice. This is the silence that forces Pilate to hear the echoes of his own
lying words. Jesus who, the first verse of the first chapter of this very
Gospel tells us, is the Word. . .here does not speak a word. Sometimes the mark
of a man is the ability to restrain his own mouth. "Behold, the man."
Behold
the man, speaking up to those who hold him down. When Pilate boasts of his
authority, Jesus quietly responds that ultimate authority lies with God alone. The
word "authority" here is interesting. It means, not absolute power,
but delegated jurisdiction invested from a higher plane. Pilate warns Jesus
that the entire might of the Roman system lies behind his every word. As a Jew,
Jesus is the ethnic minority, and Pilate represents the ethnic majority. As a peasant, Jesus is the poor, and Pilate
represents the extorted wealth of empire. As a non-citizen in his own land,
Jesus is the disenfranchised and Pilate is the one for whom the system was
designed to work.
Yet Jesus speaks one sentence with
such power that Pilate flees frightened from the room.
Pilate, he recognizes, is no more
than a boxing glove on the fist of God, a puppet on the hand of the
Puppet-Master, a pair of pliers in the grip of the Master Mechanic. And Jesus
quietly warns that if Pilate attempts to exercise authority in rebellion
against the One who gives it, he signs his own death warrant.
Mark this now: A man knows when to
be silent, but a man knows when to speak. And he speaks truth at the price of
punishment, and right at the risk of retribution. He refuses simply to
disappear, to go away and let the evil gears of an uncivil society reduce him
to dust and sweep him away. He may speak only one word of truth before the cogs
of their system grind him to powder, but in that powder there will be one gritty
grain of truth that in the end will wreck their entire machine. "Behold, the man."
Behold
the man, bearing every burden but hatred. Jesus bore it all that day, but
there was one burden he refused to bear.
He bore the beating both of whips
and of words, but there was one burden he
refused to bear.
He bore the crown of
thorns upon his head and the mocking sign above
his head, but there was
one burden he refused to bear.
He bore the
theft of his garments, the only thing he owned,
gambled away
at his very nail-pierced feet, but there was one
burden he
refused to bear.
He
bore the cross of his own unjust execution through the
crowded
streets of Jerusalem, but there was one burden he
refused
to bear.
Jesus bore it
all that day - but there was one burden he refused to bear. Jesus refused to
bear the burden of hatred.
In chapter eighteen, verse
thirty-six, Jesus tells Pilate, "My kingdom is not of this world."
And then, to define and demarcate forever the boundary between the Kingdom of
Heaven and the kingdoms of this world, the Lord explains, "If My kingdom were of this world, then My servants would be
fighting." Look carefully at that word "servants." This is the
only time Jesus uses it of his disciples. It is a legal and military term that
refers to a court officer in charge of carrying out sentences, or to the
soldiers who wage war at the will of their king. Jesus does not just say that
he has not called his servants to armed revolt: Jesus says that he has no such
soldiers because that form of battle is not an instrument of the Kingdom of
Heaven. Indeed, he has already rebuked Peter for swinging a sword at one of his
enemies in the Garden of Gethsemane!
Jesus discovers, in this moment of
crisis, that with everything a man has to bear, he has no strength for the
deadweight of hatred.
The burden of hate is too great, and
will break the back that bears its weight. In his speech, "Where Do We Go
From Here?", delivered to the 11th convention of the Southern Christian
Leadership Conference in Atlanta, Dr. King acknowledged that despite great
gains, racial injustice remained entrenched in America. "The Negro,"
he declared, "still lives in the basement of the Great Society." And
yet in the face of the unvarnished facts of injustice he declared,
And I say to you, I have also decided to stick with love, for I
know that love is ultimately the only answer to mankind's problems. . . .And
I'm not talking about emotional bosh when I talk about love; I'm talking about
a strong, demanding love. For I have seen too much hate. . . .and I say to
myself that hate is too great a burden to bear.
A man fights as long as there is
fighting to be done and there will be fighting to be done until that great and
final day when the kingdoms of this world are truly become the kingdoms of Our
Lord and of his Christ. But a man knows no solider can fight if encumbered with
weapons that will not do the work. And so a man takes up every burden God calls
him to bear, by disencumbering himself of hatred. "Behold, the man."
Right Panel: The Church
Now I must say to you this morning,
I must emphasize, that in one sense I am a poor messenger to bring this
message: because I see what you see, but I do not live what you live. The same
Constitution of the United States that declared me a creation of God with
inalienable rights declared you sixty percent of a human being. I know that
though I see what you see, I do not live what you live.
And for that reason I ask you this
morning to look, not to me, but to Jesus, because he not only sees what you
see: He lives what you live. And in the midst of your experience he has forged the
strategy for victory. We must look to Our Lord. We must "Behold, the man."
And we need to look to Jesus to
learn what it is to be a man. Because the black man in America has seen in
recent days too many thorny crowns and too many crosses. We have not seen a
soldier's scarlet tunic in mockery of ruler's purple robe, but we have seen a blood-stained
brown hoodie in Sanford, Florida. We have not seen nail-pierced hands stretched
forth on a cross, but we have seen pair of raised hands in Ferguson, Missouri.
We have not seen a man writhing for his next breath on a Roman cross in
Palestine, but we have heard a man shouting, "I can't breathe" on the
streets of Staten Island.
And how does Our Lord call a man to
respond? With the illogic of love and the insanity of non-violent rebellion.
Dr. Howard Thurman, Dean of Chapel
at Howard University and Boston
University for more
than two decades explains the terrible price we will have to pay to wage the
warfare of love. The greatest tool of nonviolence, he writes, "is the will
to refrain from the automatic response to violence: to fight or to flee."
Love, he declares, is not cutting off those who harm us, nor is it cutting
ourselves off from those who harm us. It is an insistence upon remaining in
relationship and holding up the harm to the clear light of examination. And
when we dare take the field of this battle, says Dr. Thurman, "there is
rioting in the streets of the soul, and the price of tranquility comes terribly
high." We have had rioting in the streets of Ferguson and rioting in the
streets of Watts and it is not for me to pronounce on the wisdom or rightness
of those acts. But I say with Dr. Thurman and I say with the example of Christ
that until there is rioting in the streets of our own souls as we choose to
remain in a relationship of love to a world full of hate, the citadel soul of this racist society will remain
uninvaded and we will not move forward.
In the name of Christ, in the name
of The Man, I charge you, be a man!
Be
a man, unbroken by an unjust system.
Be
a man, silent before a frightening threat.
Be
a man, speaking up to those who hold you down.
Be
a man, bearing every burden but hatred.
And I don't
for a moment blame you if you say, "Preacher, I agree, but I can't do
it." I don't for a moment blame you if you say, "I'm man enough to
fight back, but not man enough to love back." I don't for a moment blame
you if you say, "I'm man enough to die that death, but not man enough to
live that life." I don't for a moment blame you because I say the same
thing to myself. And that is why to be A man, you must know THE man. For Jesus
does not just come to set the example; he comes to empower the practice. Jesus
does not just stand before you; he dwells within you. Jesus does not just show
you what to do; Jesus shows you what he will do in and through you. "Behold, the man."
Left Panel: The World
And so today we pray as we come to a
close; today we pray as we go forth from this place, changed people to face an
unchanged world; today we pray in the immortal words of James Weldon Johnson's
great hymn, composed in 1900 on the birthday of Abraham Lincoln:
God of
our weary years,
God of
our silent tears,
Thou
who hast brought us thus far on the way;
Thou
who hast by Thy might,
Led us
into the light,
Keep
us forever in the path, we pray.
Lest
our feet stray from the places, our God, where we met Thee,
Lest
our hearts, drunk with the wine of the world, we forget Thee;
Shadowed
beneath Thy hand,
May we
forever stand,
True
to our God,
True to our native land.
"Behold, the man."
"Behold, the man."
